


Riding in Cars With Boys

by Aj (aj2245)



Category: Life (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Angst, Car rides, Friendship, Gen, Partnership, Post-Series, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:53:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8926606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aj2245/pseuds/Aj
Summary: Five Times Dani and Charlie get stuck in traffic (and one time it’s clear roads).





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skimthrough (proofinyou)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/proofinyou/gifts).



> Happy yuletide to skimthrough! Hope you enjoy the bonus treat! <3 to L for the read-through!

**Traffic Accident.**

 

Dani's had a lot of bad days in her life.

They're actually a lot more common than her good ones.  It's cosmically unfair, but she's pretty much made her peace with the situation.  Get up, deal with bullshit, sleep, rinse repeat.  Honestly, it's annoying how Buddhist philosophy about patterns and the ascending/descending wheel of fate and choice make more and more sense as time goes on.

It's something she scowls at Crews about regularly.

"Reese."  Is about all that Crews gets out of his mouth before a semi takes out the van three car lengths in front of them. 

She and Crews watch the van roll a few times before coming to rest against a light post on the opposite side of the intersection.  It's almost like a movie, she notes absently, too stunned to do much more than stare.  Dani feels the bounce-impacts through the floor of their car and mentally winces before quietly turning off the car and slapping a light on the dash board.  The cars in front of them are going nowhere, and like it or not, she and Crews are the first responders.

"You know."  She asks, unbuckling her seat belt and shoving the keys into the tiny-ass pocket of her jeans.  "I have tickets to a 9pm showing of Iron Man 2."  She pauses and throws her blazer in the back seat for safe keeping.  Damn thing was dry-clean only and there was no way she wasn't going to end up sweating and covered in fluids of some sort.  She stares at the gently rocking van.  More than likely blood.

Crews, already up and mostly out of the car, flashes her one of his bright smiles. The one she's come to learn means ‘I am about to be an asshole because this situation is inconveniencing me, but passive aggression is way more entertaining for me than being an upfront jackass’ and says. "It's nice how optimistic you've become lately!"

"I was going to ask you to come at lunch."  She pops the trunk and wanders back, mentally reviewing the last time she'd made her partner restock the emergency kit.   She keeps her face down, avoiding his expression.  If there's one thing she's worse at than her own feelings, it's dealing with other people's feelings in relation to her.

She forgets, sometimes, that she's spent entirely too much time with Charlie Crews in close quarters, so it's not a surprise when she feels a hand on her shoulder after she finishes pulling the neon orange and yellow Emergency vest over her head.  She blinks, then glares at him.  More because of the lack of startle response.

"I assume I'm buying the popcorn?"  This pain-in-the-ass-too-wide-smile actually touches his eyes a bit.

"Duh."  She says and shoves his vest at him.  He’s terrible at remembering to wear it.  "And Junior Mints."

He nods before taking off his jacket and tie.  She starts off towards the rolled van - there's a lot of crying and some idiot is doing something to the frame, probably attempting to open the smashed up door.   It would all be very heroic if it actually helps, but a quick scan reveals no hydraulic cutters.  Crews has to raise his voice for her to hear him over the noise.  "I still don't understand how you can like those."

"Some of us have TASTE, Crews."  She throws back over her shoulder mentally running through the basic aid for first responders.  She hears the trunk thunk shut behind her and isn't surprised when he's beside her pretty much instantly.  One day he'll be all bent over and stooped because gravity's an asshole, and she's determined to live to see that day.  Tall people are the worst.

"Yeah, bad taste.  I'll take traffic."  He chirps as they enter the intersection and raises his phone to call the whole thing in.

* * *

 

**Friday Traffic**

 

The AC dies on a Tuesday afternoon.

Because she's not stupid and once spent an entire six month stake-out in a van with a partner who a.) was allergic to paperwork and b.) wasn't all that keen on showers , Dani's got macros dedicated to the necessary auto repair requisition forms saved on four separate thumb drives as well as her desktop.  She even bites the bullet and looms over Tidwell until he's signed everything in triplicate AND hand-delivers the whole thing to the head of the motor pool by Wednesday at nine am.

It is not her first rodeo and July in LA is the worst thing, ever, to exist.  Yes, she's even counting her detox and rehab.

Sadly, efficiency and a glare meant to make grown men cry does nothing in the face of budget cuts and a backlog that makes even Dani wince.  Still.  Looking back, it's only the optimism born of finishing up three ongoing cases that'd let her wave dismissively and accept a "Not before Monday!" decree.

Parked on the 405 south of Granada Hills, attempting to reach a crime scene at 4pm on a Friday, that pity, optimism and willingness to wait has not only dried up, it's compacted into coal and is well on its way to becoming the Hope Diamond of spite.

"Do you want to switch places?"

She doesn't bother to look over at Crews.  It's too weird to see him in anything other than a suit and tie and even _his_ freaky temperature tolerance had given out some time during the crawl through Brentwood.   He’s down to his undershirt and has been distracting her with a trivia app on his phone for the last half hour.  Normally she’d have thrown his phone out the window, but the sun and traffic are much higher on her shit list than her partner quizzing her on world geography.

Okay, there is a distinct possibility her brain has been permanently damaged due to heat exhaustion.

Angrily, she rips the hair tie off of the gear shift and ties her hair up because it’s that or demand Crews’ knife and hacking the whole sweaty mess off.  The cars in front of them, helpfully, refuse to move while she does it.

“Noted.  You should also probably stop trying to set the road on fire with your mind.  It’s hot enough.”

She levels a flat glare at him while he gives her his best sunny, closed-mouthed smile.  It didn't take very long to figure out that was his version of being a polite dickhead.  Sometimes she wonders if she should just ask him to be a non-polite dickhead within the confines of their car, but given past experience, non-polite Crews might be a bit much.

"One day," she drawls.  "I am going to punch you really hard and no one is going to blame me."

Crews shrugs amicably and goes back to the trivia app.  "I'm honestly surprised you haven't done it already.  Capital of Azerbaijan?"

"Baku.  And you are not even trying."

* * *

 

**Diez y seis de Septiembre**

 

“You really should start checking your email more often.”

Dani hefts the orange in her right hand.  It’s newly picked and heavier than its size would suggest.

Oblivious to her evil plotting, Crews takes a sip of his creepily green smoothie.  He’s leaned up against the front of the going-nowhere car, idly rubbing a new round of sunblock onto his ear.  She frowns sadly, realizing that he’s entirely too close for the orange to do much more than make a thumping noise.

“I check my email all the time.  I am tied to my email.  My email is my life.”

“You filtered all the stuff from Events, didn’t you?”

“What’s the point of making Detective other than avoiding community service days?”  Dani sighs and uses her thumbnail to start peeling the orange. Nearly three solid years of brainwashing have brought her to this: eating fruit grown from Crews’ creepy murder orange farm.  She’ll even admit the fruit’s really good. 

Sometimes.

“Solving crime?  Righting wrongs?  Solving puzzles?”  Crews smiles and waves at a trio of girls dressed in colorful skirts and scarves.  Two give him the stink eye while the third gives a startled wave back.  Dani smirks.  Yeah, those reactions are totally appropriate.  “There are many, many reasons.”

“Mmmm.”  She hums.  Lets her attention drift beyond the wall of people in front of them to the dancers spinning and gliding to horns and guitar beyond.  Annoying as being trapped on the wrong side of a parade route might be, at least there’s entertainment.  And from the smells wafting from the elote cart, also food.  “Yeah, it’s still your fault we’re stuck.”

She feels the side-eye without having to look.

“You were born in Southern California too.  It’s not like this was a surprise.”

Dani will never admit it to any other living being on the planet - even her fish - but Crews’ dry asshole voice is pretty much her favorite thing.  And _that_ pretty much sums _her_ up as a person.

“Nu-uh.  You’re old.  You’ve lived here way longer.”  She finishes peeling her orange and stacks the peel bits on the hood next to her hip.  Cracks the sections apart and takes a bite.  “Besides, you know the rules.”

Crews’ fingers are warm and rough against her wrist as he steals a wedge.  It still surprises her how much she doesn’t mind him touching her.  Or being near her.  She chews her fruit and does her best to skate an epiphany.  It’s too nice of a day to dig in to that level of self-reflection. 

“I know, I know, everything is always and forever my fault.”

“And he learns!”  She crows and leans back on the hood to watch the rest of the Mexican Independence parade and enjoy the sun.  They’re not going anywhere for a while.

* * *

 

**Night Time Road Work**

 

“I don’t really like San Francisco.”

Dani blinks her way out of her road trance and glances at her partner.  It’s been a long day.  They’d driven up to Marin county the day before and spent most of the morning and afternoon interviewing friends and family of their current victim.  It had been productive and useful, and Dani doesn’t regret going, but hours and hours of grief and pain are not relaxing or kind, even if the emotions aren’t yours.

Annie Kent had been well loved.  The consequences of that are a lot of people in pain.

“Why not?”  Dani taps the brakes.  Traffic is moving, if slowly.  It’s close to midnight – they’d both agreed to head back and get a late start in the morning rather than spend another night in the department-approved Super 8.  As such, the night crews are out and working.  Though, for all she’d been ready to be out of Northern California, she’s not anxious to be home.

“My mom had family there.”

She considers that; though the curiosity that follows is relaxed in a way that surprises her.  Crews doesn’t talk about his mother in the same way she doesn’t talk about her time in Narcotics.  Those parts of themselves are both too private and too well explored to really bring up.  At least, that’s her interpretation.  But hey, he brought it up, and the warm night air and relative quiet of the car have lulled her into a better mood than she thinks is typical.

“You visited a lot when you were small?”

“My mom had a brother there.  My dad didn’t like him too much because he was pretty out and proud.  Moved there in the 60’s and had a home there for a long time.”

Crews’ voice is soft in the still air of the car.  There’s a lot of memory and pain wrapped up in it and Dani has a sad sure feeling of where this is going to go.  For as vulnerable as Crews lets himself be, Dani knows that half the time it’s a tactic or a manipulation.  It usually works – even works on her – because he’s so damn sincere.  This feels different though.  Reminds her strangely of a couch in an apartment with locks on the windows.

“I’m guessing Crews Sr. was not a fan of your uncle’s life?”

He huffs next to her.  “You could say that.  We didn’t see him that often, but mom put her foot down one year.  Dad stayed home, so it was just us in the car.  We took the coast highway on the way there.  Gorgeous weather.  I must have been eleven or twelve and I was so excited because I got to spend my spring break with my uncle.  I was so excited.”

She smiles, letting her brain drift with the cadence of his voice and imagines what a young Crews might have looked like.  “You told everyone in your class, didn’t you?”

“That I was going to visit my uncle in San Francisco?  Definitely.”  Crews grins and stretches himself out in the passenger seat.  It’s rare for him to be at all relaxed while they’re driving, but Dani chalks it up to the oddly liminal situation.  That and nearly nine hours in the car so far today.  “It wasn’t a huge deal, but I loved it.”

“Did you have fun?”

“Oh, yeah.”  He smiles again, obviously remembering highlights of the trip.  “Are you kidding?  Touring around the city with my mom and my uncle?  He bought me ice cream every day, and made my mom let me run around as much as I wanted when we visited Alcatraz.  I thought the cells were so cool.”

“Less so now?”  She raises her eyebrows at him.  He laughs and nods.

“Less so now.  In retrospect.”

“Mmm, retrospect.”

He’s quiet for a moment.  She sees him watch the hills from the corner of her eye and just waits.  Lets herself breathe in the late autumn scent of the evening.  It’ll be November soon.

“He died a few months after we left.”

And there it was.

“AIDS?”  Because there is a script with Crews sometimes and she’s strangely okay with following it tonight.  Maybe because he’s let her lead more than a few times.  Maybe because she’s known him long enough to want to know more.

“Yep.  It was the mid 80’s and AIDS was a plague of the righteous.”  She hears the twist in his tone as the car in front of them slows again.  In the distance, she can finally see the orange flashing lights of the road workers.  “Dad tried to stop mom from going to stay with him while he was in hospice.  Tore up her train ticket and screamed about endangering her health when she had me at home.  It was the only time I ever saw her slap him.”

“So she went?”

“Yeah.”

She glances over and almost wishes she hadn’t at the look on his face.  It’s not scary or mean or even particularly full of grief.  Just... sad.  And with it, she figures out the second level.  Slaps herself mentally for not picking up on it sooner.  There’s always a second level with Crews when it comes to emotional conversations.  It’s his James Joyce trick; once you see it a few times, you know it exists and to look for it in the first place.

“She fought for her brother.”

“Yeah.”

And there’s not really anything else to say about that.  A dead uncle, a dead mother, and a whole lot of road between then and now.

Instead, she reaches over, catches the cuff of his wrinkled shirt and scratches it lightly with nails until he turns his hand over.

His fingers are warm against hers as the flagger comes in to sight.

* * *

 

**Family Dinner**

 

"I hate everything you are."  The words grind out of Dani, all righteous anger and thousands of years of stored female genetic rage.  Honestly, she’s a little proud of how badass it comes out.

Unbothered, Charlie pops a date in his mouth and stretches out his legs.  He’s most of the way through the container he brought along as a gift.  "You're only saying that because we're late."

"We're not late, Crews."  She glares harder at the license plate in front of her.  The state of California has a lot to answer for allowing someone to buy that vanity plate.  'Stud111'?  Really?  Though, it _is_ attached to a Porsche.  "We are so beyond late that we're actually early for the next family gathering."

"Only technically.  I mean, just because we're passed sunset, and Thanksgiving IS in two weeks-"

Dani stomps the brakes, swearing.  Stud111 having made the light she's just missed.  Because OF COURSE it was that kind of day.

"You said."  She injects as much poison into her voice as she can.  "”Take the local streets, Reese!  My app says they're clearer than the highway!"  Clearer than the highway, my ass."

She ignores the responding sigh and keeps trying to mentally set the street light on fire.  Not that it changing would help.  Stud111 is blocking the intersection; the ass of his SUV hanging into the right lane of oncoming congestion.  Four BMW's and a Prius are making their annoyance known.  Loudly.

"Sadly, despite my desire to please you and your mother, I cannot predict the future.  Or an overturned milk trailer."

"I know."  Dani curses again and switches her glare from the traffic to the steering wheel.  It really isn't Crews' fault.  Traffic is fucked across most of the valleys.  Even her mother's texts have been cheerful and understanding. Given that her mother never misses a single opportunity to guilt Dani about her punctuality, her job and her lack of children, this is a pretty big show of how truly epic this traffic jam is.  Maybe, just maybe, it was _possible_ Dani is being a little hard on him.

Maybe.

“I’m sorry.” She bites the words off. 

She blinks.  Holy shit, she said that out loud.

Not only is she stuck in biblically awful traffic on her way to her _mother’s_ , she’s also apologizing to Crews.  She spends a few seconds mentally blanking out things that would make the situation worse, if just to prevent the Universe from bringing them into existence.  “This isn’t your fault.”

_Holy shit._

She uses the excuse of the light change to stoically ignore the stunned silence next to her.  She taps the gas and pulls in to the center of the intersection.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”  The guy in the Prius ahead of her looks ready to chew or spit paint.  He’s trapped in a sideways turn thanks to Stud111 and Dani mentally bets $1 that he’s going to go liberal white-guy ragey at least once by the end of the afternoon.  It’s almost soothing to see someone more annoyed than she is.

“I don’t think you’re fine.”

She risks a glance in his direction and is a bit taken aback at how concerned he looks.  It’s really annoying.

“I can apologize, Crews.  That is in me.”  She snaps and grabs the date dangling in Crews fingers.  Shoves it in her mouth and starts chewing before her mouth or brain betrays her any more than they already have.

And because Crews is a.) a good, diligent detective and b.) an asshole who she absolutely would have killed by now if he _wasn’t_ some level of jackass, he does not let it go.

“Really?  Because that’s not been my experience.”  And of course, he’s laughing at her.

She chews slowly on the last of her date and swallows, oddly thrown.  She had a lot of the shame and insecurity burned out of her fairly young.  There’s nothing like having your childhood and drug addiction _and_ alcohol addiction rubbed in your face by well-meaning therapists, superiors, and family to crush out any hint of embarrassment or regret in terms of actions.  So no, she really doesn’t apologize much.

She is who she is.  She does what she does.  Maybe she should be a little better about admitting when she’s wrong though.

There must be something that shows on her face because she can see Crews’ face solemnify in her peripheral vision.  Keeps her foot on the brake – Prius Guy has finally turned right, but no one is going anywhere – and sees Crews drop his hand from reaching out to her as she turns her head.

She knows why he reacts that way. She’s been pretty explicit with the no-touching thing and while Crews pushes boundaries left, right and center, he’s pretty big on consent. And while it makes her a little sad right now, it’s also the main reason he’s in the car with her on the way to her mother’s house for dinner.

“Reese?”

“Crews, this traffic jam is not your fault.”

For as much as she gives her partner shit about having five layers to every conversation, she does pretty much the same thing. It takes a second or two, but when he figures out that, yes, she is saying a lot more than she’s speaking, his face completely changes. Softening in a way that hadn’t even happened when she’d originally invited him along tonight.

“Hey.” He’s smiling with his eyes and she can feel the involuntary turn of her lips in response. “Rule number one, right? Everything is always my fault.”

“Charlie?”

He blinks. Because she can count on one hand the number of times she’s used his first name independent of his last. 

“Dani?”

“Thank you for coming tonight. I’m glad you said yes.”

Something in her chest lightens, warming at his soft, genuine smile. It stays there, even after all the cars behind her lean on their horns as the intersection finally opens up. 

 

**Clear Roads**

 

For people who spend a lot of time on administrative or sick leave, she and Crews are surprisingly terrible at taking vacations.

Feet on the dashboard of Crews’ remodeled Mustang, sunglasses on, and taking a few pulls out of an iced coffee, Dani wonders why that is.  She likes work, but she likes being _not_ at work too.  Not arresting people on purpose rather than because they can’t find the person they want to arrest is pretty fun.  As is speeding down an empty back road.

Which, okay, has not always been the case in her life.  But it’s true now.

“You look happy.”

She raises an eyebrow at her partner.  He looks surprisingly comfortable behind the wheel given how little he drives when she’s in the car.  She smirks, shrugging a bare shoulder before rolling her neck to look out the side window. 

“I thought happiness is considered ephemera?”

She smiles at the soft snort he gives her and closes her eyes against the mid-afternoon sun.  It’s a beautiful day and it’s really amazing to let herself just enjoy it.

“All moments are ephemeral.  Each moment-“

“-is its own present and we can only be in the moment we are in.”

Crews laughs then.  Bright and wide and happy before she feels him shift into a higher gear coming off their last hill.  She hums, feeling herself relax that extra tiny bit that only ever seems to happen around this man.  Her eyes are closed, the sun is warm on her face, and her partner is quiet and cheerful next to her.

There are worse ways to greet the next moment.

Fin


End file.
